Startup of the Week: SPCE

  • SPCE was founded by Leon Ifayemi in 2017.
  • The startup’s cornerstone platform Atlas helps make the rental experience easier for landlords and tenants/students.
  • SPCE have raised a total of $1m over 2 funding rounds.

Website: https://www.liveinspce.com/

 

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Helping to connect landlords with students looking for places to rent, our startup of the week for this week is SPCE. This London-based proptech helps organisations to deliver transformative housing services, with a rental product ecosystem revolutionising the way they connect to the property rental market.

SPCE have created Atlas, helping to disrupt student house hunting, helping them to connect with landlords in a safe, quick and easy way.

The idea for the startup came when founder and CEO Leon Ifayemi was at University, working in the Student Housing Department. During his time working here, Leon came to realise just how broken the rental market was – with students and landlords commonly facing similar problems, with no one taking action to fix them. SPCE state on their website:

“We live in an increasingly mobile-driven environment, the app is King and people want the world at their fingertips. And so the seeds of SPCE were planted – mobile-first, sleekly designed, impeccably executed, functional housing software for public sector organisations.”

Since its inception, SPCE has been able to identify some of the major issues and top trends affecting the living arrangements of tenants, from resolving deposit dispute difficulties to controlling rental prices.

The startup’s Atlas product aims to make it cheaper, faster and simpler for students to find rented accommodation, pre-vetting students while making it more profitable and attractive for landlord to rent to the student market.

For Atlas, SPCE has established partnerships with leading UK providers for student accommodation, including AIESEC and Experian. The startup has raised a total of $1m over the course of 2 funding rounds, their latest, a pre seed round announced in 2018, having raised $120k.

Founder Leon claims “Anyone currently at university or who’s graduated in the past will more than likely have their fair share of horror stories about finding, securing and living in rented accommodation. And the truth is that many landlords will also have a tale or two to tell about renting properties to students.”

“Not only are we going to make it easy for students to find desirable properties and for landlords to locate new tenants, but we are also going to make communication between both parties throughout the tenancy absolutely effortless.”

Whilst the sale of the existing Atlas product continues across the UK, new products by SPCE are in development with large institutional collaborators. One is intended to serve students in halls of residence / on-campus, and others are to extend beyond the higher education sector into banking, and conventional corporate property development. Announcements are expected in the next 18 – 24 months.